Shona Hilton*, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom Sally Macintyre, Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom Mark Petticrew, Department of Social & Environmental Health Research, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom David Ogilvie, Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and UKCRC Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), Institute of Public Health, Cambridge, United Kingdom Susan Jebb, Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom Lindsay Hogg, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom Track: Research Presentation Topic: Participatory health care Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2014-05-27

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Background: Governments around the world are increasingly emphasising the need for health policy decisions to be informed by research evidence. Similarly evidence-based practice is an interdisciplinary approach to clinical practice that has been gaining ground since the early 1990s in which clinical decisions are based on the best available evidence with practitioner expert involvement. However, empirical studies continue to highlight gaps between policy, practice and the available evidence. One barrier often highlighted is the existence of communicative gaps between academics and decision makers, suggesting that people find it difficult to assess the credibility of research evidence so often rely on a host of non academic sources to shape their ideas on policy debates and decisions as a result. In this respect, professionals find common ground with public consumers of evidence who also often report challenges in interpreting the credibility of the growing expanse of academic research they read and hear about in the popular press.
Objective: The aim of this study is to help bridge the communicative gap between academics and evidence users by developing an online intervention which explains scientific concepts and processes so that a person can ask, find, or determine answers to questions about research evidence and draw conclusions about the validity of research studies.
Methods: The ‘Understanding Health Research’ tool was developed in three stages. Firstly, a scoping phase was conducted in which a literature review of the currently available tools for appraising research was carried out, followed by 17 interviews and three workshops with a wide range of organisations and people who regularly produce, use, or assess health research as part of their job. The second phase was concerned with developing and building the tool with a web designer and population health scientist, we are currently in the third stage in which we are testing the tool with a wide range of users. This presentation is to demonstrate the utility of the web based e-tool which is due to be launched later in 2014.